Virtual Writing Workshop

Next Saturday, I’ll be leading a writing workshop for adults, “Feeling your Way into Fiction,” hosted by the Regina Public Library.

This is a real treat for me because I rarely work with adult writers — and even more rarely with Saskatchewan-based adult writers. Gotta love Zoom.

This will be a prompt-based workshop where we start with reality — real emotions, real settings, real yearnings for characters a bit like ourselves — and leap away from reality into fiction. I’m so looking forward to it. Who doesn’t love a leap away from reality?

USA WPA (Work Projects Administration) poster from 1940 — and still awesome.

I’ve been blessed this spring to lead many creative writing workshops with kids and teens, and to read hundreds of student stories as a judge of the Ottawa Public Library’s Awesome Authors contest. But sometimes it’s nice to work with adults.

I read some great stories by emerging adult writers this spring, as a second reader for The Writers’ Union of Canada’s annual Short Prose Competition. But there’s nothing like reading works fresh out of a writer’s mind in a prompt-based workshop. Something brilliant inevitably materializes out of nowhere, or at least a diamond in the rough, and it’s always magical to see that happen.

If you are a writer living in Regina who’d like to leap away from reality with me, there are still spots available in the workshop — 10am your time on May 11th; register on the RPL website.

If you live elsewhere, check out your own local library for other writing workshops — libraries are the best places in the world for writers looking to connect.

Happy Spring!